The Book Club: Louise Penny’s newest mystery keeps the twists coming

Editor s note The opinions of the smart well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables So we questioned them and all Denver Post readers to share their mini-reviews with you Have any to offer Email bellis denverpost com Barbara Ellis Dominion by Addie E Citchens Farrar Straus and Giroux DOMINION By Addie E Citchens Farrar Straus Amp Giroux pp Dominion references both the town where this novel is set and also the attitude of male dominance that permeates it Every character here is flawed in specific essential way Certain hide their flaws behind religion others behind alcohol or drugs specific behind athletic prowess or even behind naked audacity But revenge and deadly violence tear down all the facades confronting the survivors with the results of their willful complicity studied ignorance and hubris A powerful tale of the ultimate price of misogyny paid not only by women but also by the men who seek to exert their dominion stars out of Kathleen Lance Denver The Black Wolf by Louise Penny Minotaur Books This novel is the continuation of the storyline from s The Gray Wolf in which Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec and his chief agents Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste stopped a domestic terrorist attack on the Montreal water system They arrested the person they thought was behind the attack and referred to him as the Black Wolf Several weeks later Gamache is in Three Pines and still suffering from hearing loss and injuries but realizes that the attack was only a diversion from the real goal of provoking the U S to attack Canada to ensure its own water materials Gamache and his company must search quietly for those responsible and stop the real conspiracy as lies spread and friends become enemies There are countless twists and turns and new allies are discovered to assist in identifying and stopping the Black Wolf stars out of Diana Doner Lafayette Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd Atria Books Lately a nun middle-aged Nora Breen moves into a boarding house in a seaside village slowly healing from the adversities of World War II Her first task is to locate her young friend Frieda but this mission is superseded by the death of a boarding house resident Nora s advance as an amateur detective creates the storyline but the pleasure here is Kidd s superlative characterizations elevating this book far above the writing level of preponderance cozy mysteries I ve read several books by Kidd and each one is exquisite and remarkably different stars out of Neva Gronert Parker Coded Justice by Stacey Abrams Doubleday Abrams is brilliant writing a credible novel about rogue AI In this thriller attorney Avery Keene assembles a gang a precaution financial analyst a techie her boyfriend and a physician to conduct an internal review of a tech company poised for an IPO of an AI system designed to better serve veterans robustness care while accounting for inborn prejudice and stereotyping Things go awry when the principal tiger association is exposed to carbon monoxide killing the lead and threatening the IPO There are plenty of individuals within the company and outside of it Numerous players expect financial gain or loss based on the outcome of the scrutiny A great page-turner stars out of Jo Calhoun Denver This cover image issued by Simon Schuster shows History Matters by David McCullough Simon Schuster via AP History Matters by David McCullough Simon Schuster Published posthumously this is a collection of speeches essays and even an interview from the Paris Review that in the editors estimation provide a little more of David McCullough McCullough the historian tells us repeatedly that outcomes are not inevitable that those living through events never really know how it will all turn out But this slim volume is much more than a defense of history McCullough the continuous learner notes Our curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages McCullough a two-time National Book Award winner for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Truman and John Adams was definitely no cabbage head but there s not that much new here stars out of Kathleen Lance Denver